Ashlinn stole through the city of Bridges and Bones like a knife through a consul’s chest. The sounds of panic were swelling in the arena behind them, the girl’s heart singing as cathedrals all over the city began ringing a death knell.

“Black Mother, she did it.”

She chewed her lip, stifling a fierce grin.

“She did it.”

Ash moved quicker, over canals and through the twisting thoroughfares of the marrowborn district. The three suns blazed above, the heat relentless, sweat soaking her through. She would have stopped for a breather, but truth was, she had no time to breathe. From the sounds of chaos rising from the distant arena, word of Scaeva’s death was spreading across the city like a brushfire. Soon the Red Church would know their beloved patron was dead, and all the fury of the acolytes of Our Lady of Blessed Murder would be raining down on their heads.

She had to meet Mercurio at the necropolis, then Mia in the harbor. From there, they could slip out into the blue where no Blade or member of the Ministry could find them. Then she could rest. Breathe. Sink into Mia’s arms and never, ever let go again.

Ashlinn made her way in the shadow of the Ribs, over a broad marble span to the Sword Arm. The air was slowly filling with the song of tolling bells, panicked shouts ringing through the city behind her. A boy ran past, eyes wide, waving his cap and yelling in a shrill voice.

“The consul and cardinal slain!”

“Assassin!” came another distant shout. “Assassin!”

She reached the wrought-iron fences surrounding the houses of Godsgrave’s dead. Slipping through the tall gates, Ashlinn made her way to a door carved with a relief of human skulls, and down into the dank shadows of the necropolis. Swift and silent, she stole through the twisted tunnels of femurs and ribs, to the tomb of some long-forgotten senator. Pulling a small lever to reveal a hidden door in a stack of dusty bones, and finally, slipping into the corridors of the Red Church chapel.

Dark.

Quiet.

Safe at last.

She dashed to Mia’s sparse bedchamber, snatched up a small leather pack and Mia’s precious gravebone longsword. The crow’s eyes on the hilt glittered red in the low light, Ash sparing a glance for the empty bed, the empty walls, the empty dark. And turning on her heel, she dashed back down the corridor to Mercurio’s office.

“Are you ready t—”

Ashlinn’s heart stilled in her chest. Sitting behind Mercurio’s desk, fingers steepled at her chin, was an elderly woman with curling gray hair. She seemed a kindly old thing, eyes twinkling as she looked Ashlinn up and down. Though she sat in the bishop’s chair, she wouldn’t have seemed out of place beside a happy hearth, grandchildren on her knee and a cup of tea by her elbow.

“Revered Mother Drusilla,” Ashlinn breathed.

“O, no, young Dona Järnheim,” the old woman said. “I’ve not been Revered Mother since your treachery saw Lord Cassius murdered. Now, I am Lady of Blades.”

Ashlinn looked about the room. Four other figures, swathed in gloom—the entire Red Church Ministry, waiting for her. Aalea with her death-black stare and blood-red lips. Spiderkiller, glowering in a gown of emerald green. Mouser with his old man’s eyes and his young man’s smile. And finally, Solis, blind gaze upturned to the ceiling, glowering at her nonetheless.

Ashlinn’s grip tightened on Mia’s gravebone sword.

“ . . . Where’s Mercurio?” she demanded.

“The bishop of Godsgrave is already back at the Quiet Mountain,” Solis said.

“He put up some resistance,” Mouser said. “We had to hurt him, I’m afraid.”

Spiderkiller looked at Ashlinn with black, glittering eyes. “There are some among us who are dearly hoping the same can be said of you, child.”

“Please,” Drusilla waved to the chair in front of her. “Sit.”

“Or what?” Ashlinn said, her anger rising. “You can’t kill me like you killed my da, you old bitch. The map’s branded on my skin. If I die, it’s lost forever.”

“Please sit, Dona Järnheim,” said a voice.

A man stepped out from Mercurio’s bedchamber, and Ashlinn’s belly filled with cold ice. He was tall, painfully handsome, dark hair shot through with the faintest streaks of gray. He wore a long toga of rich purple, a golden laurel at his brow.

“No . . . ,” Ashlinn breathed.

“If we wanted you dead, you’d have been so long ago,” Consul Scaeva said. “So, please, sit before we are forced to resort to . . . unpleasantness.”

“You’re dead,” Ashlinn whispered. “I saw you die . . .”

“No,” Scaeva said. “Although I admit the likeness was uncanny.”

Ashlinn’s eyes grew wide as realization sank home . . .

“The Weaver,” Ash whispered. “Marielle. She gave someone else your face . . .”

“You always were a clever one, Ashlinn,” Aalea smiled.

“You’ll forgive the appertaining drama, I hope,” Consul Scaeva said. “But such subterfuge is necessary for a man with as many enemies as I.”

Ashlinn searched their faces, mind awhirl.

They’d known.

They’d known this whole fucking time . . .

But why would they let us . . .

. . . Unless they wanted us . . .

Like a puzzlebox with no more missing pieces.

All of them falling into place.

“You wanted Cardinal Duomo dead,” she whispered. “But you couldn’t just have the Church kill him. He was protected by the Red Promise. Only a Blade would be good enough to end him . . . but it had to be a Blade willing to betray the Ministry. That way, the Church’s reputation stays intact, and you still see your enemy dead.”

“And once I reveal myself miraculously alive to Godsgrave’s adoring citizens . . .”

“ . . . They’ll adore you all the more.”

“And be left with no doubt of the continuing danger our Republic faces.”

“Buying you a fourth term as consul . . .”

“O, no,” Scaeva said, smiling wide. “That laurel is already bought. But the brutal assassination of a grand cardinal in front of the entire capital on Aa’s most holy feast? Say it with me, young Dona Järnheim. Perpetual. Emergency. Powers.”

Ashlinn’s lips curled in derision.

The ego on this tosser . . .

The girl tossed her pack away with an almost casual contempt, plopped herself into the offered chair, and put her feet on Mercurio’s desk, right in Drusilla’s face. The old woman glowered, but Mia’s gravebone blade was still in Ash’s hand, her fingers drumming on the hilt.

“Foresaw everything, neh?” she asked the consul.

“I foresaw enough.”

“Except the part where Mia stole your son?”

The smile slowly faded from Scaeva’s lips.

“That was . . . unfortunate,” the consul said, a muscle twitching at his jaw. “The boy should never have been allowed to accompany my doppelganger to the presentation. My wife . . . she cannot have children, you see. So she indulges, perhaps too much.” Scaeva’s lips curled in a smile again, small and deadly. “But no matter. I have the beloved teacher. And now I have the beloved. And cold as she is, I think not even my daughter would harm her own brother.”

The floor dropped away from beneath Ashlinn’s feet.

“ . . . Daughter?”

Ashlinn felt movement behind her. A quick glance showed a thin, pale boy with stunning blue eyes in the chamber doorway, dressed in a dark velvet doublet. He was mute as always, but the knife in his hands looked sharp enough to cut the sunslight in six. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been trussed up in Luminatii chains, thanks to her betrayal. She’d wager he was the type to bear a grudge.

“All right, Hush?” Ashlinn asked.

She saw other figures behind him, scowling, glowering—Blades, all, no doubt.

“Time to go, Ashlinn,” Drusilla said.

“O, no,” Ashlinn mewled. “Can’t I stay a little longer and listen to the consul gloat? I do so enjoy hearing the wanker tell me how he’s thought of everything.”

“You disagree, Dona Järmheim?” Scaeva smiled.

“I fear I must, Consul Scaeva,” Ashlinn smiled in reply. “Because a person who’d thought of everything might have thought to look in my pack before I dropped it. And a person not so fond of his own fucking voice might have heard the fuse on the tombstone bomb inside.”

Drusilla’s eyes widened. Ashlinn threw herself aside as her pack exploded with an earsplitting boom. Solis was blasted across the room, smashing into the wall. The Ministry were caught in the arkemical fireball, Hush was smashed out through the chamber doors, his doublet aflame, the rest of the Blades tossed about like straw.

Ashlinn was up and running, ears bleeding, clothes smoking, head swimming from the blast. Mia’s gravebone sword in hand, she dashed through the necropolis, at least three Church Blades on her heels. Sprinting through the twisting labyrinth, she made it to the upper levels, bursting out into the graveyard, suns beating down on her back. She had to make it to the harbor, had to—

The dagger took her in the back of her thigh, scraping the bone. She screamed and stumbled, mincing her palms and knees on the flagstones as she hit the ground. Teeth gritted, she rolled over, tore the dagger loose. Staggering to her feet, she saw four Church Blades bearing down on her. Silent and grim, dark eyes hardened to flint. Killers one, killers all. Each a storm, with no pity for the one they were to drown.

Ashlinn raised Mia’s gravebone sword.

Looking among the killers and smiling dark.

“I’m guessing you’re supposed to take me alive,” she grinned. “Apologies in advance . . .”

“Aye,” said the woman leading them. “We’re sorry too.”

Ashlinn blinked. Vision swimming. World spinning. Looking at the blood on her shaking fingers, spilling over her wounded thigh, down to the dagger that had struck her, and finally noticing the discoloration on the steel.

Poison.

“S’pose I should’ve expected that . . . ,” she muttered.

A chill stole over her, dark and hollow. Goosebumps rippling on her bloodied skin. The suns burned high overhead, but here in the necropolis, the shadows were dark, almost black. A shape rose up behind the Blades, hooded and cloaked, swords of what could only have been gravebone in its hands. It lashed out at the closest killer, hacked his head almost off his shoulders. The other Blades turned quick as flies, raised their steel, but the figure moved like lightning, striking with its gravebone once, twice, three times. And almost faster than Ashlinn could blink, all four Blades were left dead and bleeding on the flagstones.

“Maw’s teeth,” she whispered.

It wasn’t human. That much was clear. O, it was shaped like a man beneath that cloak—tall and broad shouldered. But its hands . . .’byss and blood, the hands wrapped about its sword hilts were black. Tenebrous and semitranslucent, fingers coiled about the hilts like serpents. Ashlinn couldn’t see its face, but small, black tentacles writhed and wriggled from within the hollows of its hood, pulling the cowl lower over its features. And though it was truelight, three suns burning high in the sky, its breath hung in white clouds before its lips, Ash’s whole body shivering at the chill.

“ . . . Who are you?”

The thing peeled back its hood. Pallid skin. Saltlocks writhing like living things. Pitch black and hollow eyes. But even with the poison swimming in her veins, all the world around her fading to black, Ashlinn would recognize his face anywhere.

“HELLO, ASHLINN,” he said.

“’Byss and blood,” she breathed.

The darkness closing in.

“ . . . Tric?”